Sunstroke paradise

After throwing up most of today, I now feel well enough to post the photos of our lovely hike at Yellow Dragonfly Waterfall yesterday.

Between Stephen almost dying on the way up and me almost needing to be hospitalised on the way down with sunstroke, I guess we won't be invited on any more hikes anytime soon! How am I going to lose the 300 kilos I need to shed before my wedding now...?!

The hunt for the perfect hat starts now.

But then he isn't...

This picture makes me melt. I don't know why. Krusty's the exact opposite of a robot around babies...

Krusty dreams of electric sheep

Krusty informed me this morning that he really wasn't bothered if our wedding was just saying "I do" and then going home to watch a DVD, or preferably the Bloomberg channel. When I explained how unromantic this was and how I didn't want to look back 30 years from now and realise I had watched the stock markets on my wedding night, he said he saw my point and was willing to "switch on" his emotions. Once he had "made the necessary emotional connections" he then started discussing what romantic places to remember we could go to. I am going to be married to a robot.

At 8 o clock, 8 minutes and 8 seconds (HK time), on 08.08.2008

In a photo booth in Gare de Lyon...

Lost in Tai Tam

Last weekend, we went to see what a tree looks like.

In Hong Kong it's very easy to forget that the world should actually look green, not metallic and shiny, so people go on hikes to immerse themselves in Nature and realise that this city actually has a very diverse landscape.

We started at Wong Nai Chung Gap Reservoir, which was built in 1899, as Caroline told us, brandishing her "Serious Hiker's Guide". We can't have been that "serious" though, as we had stupidly decided to start our hike at midday, not realising that after 10 minutes walking along the trail, we would be drenched in sweat, and feeling like we were walking in a giant sauna. Silly silly.

It didn't matter though - we saw dragonflies of all the colours of the rainbow, streams and lakes (including one in which, urban legend has it, a man got rid of his piranhas, creating a increasing local population of the carnivorous fish...), forests and beaches. It was a lovely break from the jackhammers.

We also met a group of boys who were jumping off all of the bridges they could find, in real Jackass fashion. Completely fearless. In fact, when I mentioned to one of them that the water they were jumping into might be infested with piranhas, the only reply I got was, "coooool". I wish I could be so careless sometimes...

At the end of our hike, we sipped Pimms on South Bay Beach. You can imagine how hard it was to make our way back to dried seafood street after that...

A good match

To add to their "family" names, our lawyers are also perfectly suited to each of us - mine is just keen to get things moving (some could say a little slapdash), and Krusty's is keen to mull over every tiny little detail.
It really does feel like it was meant to be...

Destiny

Who would have known that getting married could be so unromantic? Between discussions about prenups and the signature of documents "in case of divorce" that describe me as a "spinster" (nice), we are very far from the Hollywood chick flicks of a Prince Charming down on his knee, brandishing a million dollar ring that leads to a fairy tale wedding...

So now the secret is out about us getting married in France next June, you might as well know about our administrative wedding in Hong Kong, or as I like to call it, "the visa wedding".

I am trying to forget that this part is actually the real wedding, concentrating instead on the preparations for next year, but the feeling of getting off on the wrong foot is still quite present, the feeling of a love story that is actually a law story...

And I suppose even though I am counting August as the official proposal, Krusty first "proposed" when I hated my job that I wanted to leave but couldn't because of my visa, and he said that "every cloud has a silver lining, or a gold one, or a platinum one, up to you". Following this cute proof of love, we have been living a battle between Krustian reason (based very much in legal protection) and Gitanesque emotiveness (based in romance novels (well, Jane Austen) and romantic movies).

Anyway, we're getting married as soon as possible, if possible, and although we didn't want anyone to know, now everyone does.

It's not that bad though. Thirty years ago, my mother was marrying an Englishman in Northern Ireland to be able to stay with him while he had been sent there by the army. Now I will marry a Northern Irishman in Hong Kong to be able to stay with him while he has been sent here by... well... the "cult" of finance.

And... if you can believe it, our lawyers are called Alfred and Elsie - those are also the names of my grandparents! It's destiny!

All this to say that when I was ten years old, I imagined my Prince Charming riding me into the sunset on his horse towards a life with no problems, but I didn't realise that instead he would ride me into the pollution of Hong Kong towards a storm of Excel spreadsheets and legal documents. They don't show that in the movies!

Does that mean that when my first child is born I won't be fresh, beautiful and relaxed, and that my baby won't be clean, pretty and quiet?

One more time

Today's Chinese poem is courtesy of my new notebook, whose cover reads:

"Rashness & Courage
The best method to be happy is simply have seat with your friends and people you love
Rashness borrows the name of courage
But it is of another race
And nothing allied to that virtue
This descended directly from prudence, that from folly and presumption"

Indeed...

Wedding cake

Well, some have told me it's way too early but as I thought this would be the best part of the whole wedding process, the part I had been waiting for since I was a little girl, yesterday I went hunting for a wedding dress.

There's just one thing I hadn't taken into consideration - I live in the country of tiny Chinese girls. I mean, there are some larger versions of the teeny ladies here too, but maybe those ones don't get married...

Anyway, I found a dress I liked on the internet, found out who the retailer was, and made my way to be transformed into a three-tired cake. When I got there however, I was informed that the largest size they had was about 10 sizes smaller than the one I needed, adding (very considerately) that this was already quite a large size by Hong Kong standards.

The (tiny) sales assistant then told me that this problem happens sometimes, and that I should just try it on anyway and not do the zip up. I resisted for a little while, but as soon as she had understood that I would not pay for the dress if it ripped as I tugged it on, I decided to go with her suggestion.

In the changing room, I stopped breathing and shimmied and twisted into the many, many layers of dress (I had no idea a wedding dress would be so heavy and hard to manipulate), and once I had managed to get the underlayers to remain under, I stepped out of the booth.

And then I saw myself in the mirror...

The hem of the dress, which was supposed to gently sweep the floor, was hanging around my calves while the waist was somewhere under my cleavage. I looked like a little sausage wrapped in silk.

The sales assistant continued to tell me that I looked gorgeous while I laughed and cried and just didn't know what to do with myself.

But that was nothing - back in the changing booth, I could get out of what it had taken me so long to get into. I was drowning in a sea of tulle, stuck in a satin cage.

And now I'm stuck because although I had no intention of buying a dress (I want to have it made), I have no idea what suits me or not. Although I do know that a dress 10 sizes too small doesn't look that great.

Plus, ever since I told Krusty about this, instead of his usual pet name of "Incredible Hulk", he has been calling me the "Incredible Bulk".

I feel like a million dollars...

Chinese poetry

Lately we always seem to end up in a bar just off Lan Kwai Fong called Baby Buddha. It is at the end of a little alley and opens up onto a tiny little temple full of incense. But more importantly, it's where the little lady with the black backpack comes to sell her DVDs.

And the best thing about the DVDs? Not that the selection is HUGE, but that the blurbs on the back of them are absolutely hilarious. See if you can guess what film this is the blurb for. Real poetry...

"The silly person has the silly's person's good fortune, the smart person has smart person's worry... Professor Lawrence bosom Chinese zither bold Germany is that literature great masters typical representative. He has one fully is the wisdom head melon seed, scintillation, in Queen Victoria in the middle of the time literature's domain, is the authority who deserves. Lawrence's this kind individuality when faces in the family and love difficult problem, looks like a baby boy, paced back and forth completely, is chaotic. He has like the sleepwalk this to let the human prepare the feeling confusedly."

Loving it...

Krusty and La Gitane in 1958

If Krusty and I had met and gone out together in 1958, here's what we would have looked like! Amazing!!

Lock me up

And so the cleaning lady came.

When she arrived she must have thought I was a freak as I opened the door with a loud gasp - she is so tiny that she looks about 12! I watched her try to clean the kitchen sink and didn't know what to think as she was on her tiptoes, not able to reach the plughole without stepping up on a stool...

I never like being around when the cleaning lady is here anyway, it makes me feel like a slave driver. But now, I feel like I am guilty of encouraging child labour!

She is well into her twenties, so I know I am OK, but I just had to find an errand to do to get out of the house and escape the sensation of being a monster.

At least my fear of Krusty falling in love with the Phillipina maid has disappeared - although she is beautiful, surely he would feel like a paedophile running away with her...

Brrr...